Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Ed Wood

Ed Wood is Tim Burton's Schindler's List.  There.  I said it.

Lets dive right in, shall we?  In the early 50's, a young filmmaker named Ed struggles to make movies by any means necessary.  Undeterred by repeat failures, he is convinced his luck has changed when he meets the once great, now forgotten horror star, Bela Lugosi.  Together, the pair make some of the worst films of all time.

There are two types of Ed Wood fans; those who discovered his objectively terrible films on their own, and those who discovered him through this film.  Some are the former.  Most are the latter. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

The film shows considerable maturity for Burton.  Saddled with the responsibility of telling the story of a real person's life, Burton stays away from the stop-motion animation and gothic imagery that has defined his career up to this point.  Instead, he makes a film "the Ed Wood way."  The production design by Tom Duffield recreates Wood's reality in painstaking detail and the black and white cinematography by Stefan Czapsky captures it beautifully.  You're not just in Ed's world, you see it from his eyes.

They say we love characters for trying more than for their success.  Ed may be the poster child for that ideal.  The screenplay written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, based on the book by Rudolph Grey certainly thinks so.  We're always in Wood's corner.  We cringe as he gets knocked down and we cheer for him each and every time he gets back up.

The film boasts an impressive cast including Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray (who regrettably has never appeared in another Burton film) and a delightful cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio and Maurice LaMarche simultaneously as Orson Welles.

Martin Landau is magnetic as the foul-mouthed Hungarian.  His relationship with Ed, as they grow from idolized admiration to mutual appreciation, is tragically beautiful.  Both are striving for respect and legacy.  Wood, for a respect he has never achieved and Lugosi for a respect he once possessed.  Never meet your heroes, kids.

But the real star of the film is Johnny Depp as the titular Ed Wood in what may be the finest performance of his career (not counting Captain Jack in Pirates 1).  He imbues the character with delicate sensitivity.  He looks at everything and everyone with the energetic wonder of a child.  Watching Depp going over dailies of Lugosi stumbling through a scene, you'd think he was watching the second coming of Christ.  He has no self-critic, no voice in his head asking if what he's making is total shit.  He can't afford it.

Ed surrounds himself with failures, not to prop himself up, but because nobody of substance would agree to work with him.  They become his friends, compatriots, and accomplices as he passionately convinces them to steal giant, robotic squids and get baptized in a swimming pool.  And when Wood reveals himself as a transvestite, very risqué back then, they embrace him with loving arms, laughing with him.  They form a loyal circus group of badness that you want to join.

Ed Wood has had a hard time finding its crowd.  Its the film that most casual Tim Burton fans, I'm talking about the Hot Topic crowd here, seem to have missed.  Whereas, more serious cinefiles, those who stick up their noses at Batman or Sleepy Hollow, praise as his best.  Whichever way you look at it, whichever camp you find yourself in, its certainly a gem.

Under the care of almost any other director or written by any other screenwriter, this story could be nothing more than a series of potshots at the character but that's not the case here.  Sure, there are more than a few jabs at the hapless filmmaker and his crew, but at its heart, this is a story about determination and pursuit of one's dreams.  The film is never cruel.  Rather, its filled with admiration and respect for a man who was a terrible artist, but was still a man, with hopes and dreams, who made friends and watched people die.  He felt love and he felt heartache.  In that way, Ed Wood is one of the most human films I've ever seen.

Despite being critically well received and winning several Academy Awards, the film was a box office flop.  No accounting for taste, I suppose.  Check it out, immediately.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Batman Returns

After the monster smash that was BATMAN, Warner Bros was willing to do anything to get Burton back at the helm but Burton had moved on.  The tradeoff: he could do whatever he wanted with this one.  So how does one of Hollywood's most visually inventive directors follow up one of the most financially successful films of all time with a massive budget and free reign?  He makes one of the most unique super hero films of all time.  He makes BATMAN RETURNS.

The plot is all over the map, as though Burton and his screenwriters got bored every 15 pages and decided to go a completely different direction.  So here we go...

It's Christmas time and a corrupt businessman named Max Shreck has bribed all of the politicians to look the other way as his new power plant drains Gotham of all its energy.  Meanwhile, living in the sewers under the streets, is a deformed man named Oswald Cobblepot.  Abandoned and left for dead by his parents, Cobblepot was saved by either the Circus or an abandoned zoo, its never clear which.  Cobblepot blackmails Shreck for control and the two concoct a plan to elect the hideous Penguin Mayor of Gotham City.  At the same time, Shreck's shy but intelligent secretary, Selina Kyle discovers Schrek's fiendish plot and he throws her out a window.  She lives and decides she's had enough of men pushing her around.  She returns from the dead to seek revenge on all mankind as the vicious Catwoman.  Oh, and Batman's in it.

Narratively, it's a mess.  The stories work independently and there are no plot points that I would call "bad" but as a collective whole, the story simply doesn't work.  There is also a subplot about the Penguin deciding to kill all of Gotham's first born sons.  Then all children in general.  And an attempt to turn the Batmobile into a bomb.  And Wayne Corp deciding whether or not to do business with Shreck.  And a duel relationship between Batman and Catwoman/Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle.  It's bananas.

Michael Keaton returns as Bruce Wayne and Batman and he makes a strong argument for being the best Batman ever to grace the silver screen.  He is quiet, understated, and still trying to come to grips with how to be Batman and live a normal life.

One of the most common complaints about this movie is that there are too many villains.  The problem isn't the number but that their stories lack focus.  The Dark Knight Rises had the same problem, but at least the villains in Returns are interesting.  As the Penguin, we have Danny DeVito in the role he was born to play.  Correction: he was born to play Burton's Penguin.  He's gross.  He's violent.  He's frightening.  He's perverted.  He's hilarious.

The role of Catwoman was coveted by virtually every woman in town.  Legend has it, Sean Young dressed up in a cat suit and walked through the Warner Bros lot before barging into the Producer's office and declaring, "meow! I am Catwoman!"  The role eventually went to Michelle Pfeiffer and I don't care what any of the Nolan Fans say, Pfeiffer has yet to be beaten as Catwoman.  She plays both parts as extreme as possible and it works.  Her character carries an understandable grudge against all the men who have held women down for far too long (more on that later).  Her suit, which she had to be vacuumed into before every take, is a thing of genius, making her look like the Bride of Frankenstein had an S&M fetish.  Like everything else in this movie, she is far removed from the source material, but what is on screen is memorable and iconic.  Her performance single-handedly thrust countless boys into puberty.  Too much information?  Probably.

All of the villains are interesting creations, except for Shreck played by Christopher Walken.  Does anyone ever believe him as a human being?  I don't know if Shreck was a part of the comics (although Max Shreck is the name of the actor who played Nosferatu years ago so I'm guessing no), but he only works as a stitch in this movie.  He ties the villains together and while the film gets some of its best satirical pot shots at his expense, he only adds to the bloated feeling throughout.

So why do I like this movie?

Well, despite its loopy, convoluted story, I just can't ignore what a unique film this turned out to be.  It exists in a strange spectrum.  Only a studio's desperation to keep Burton happy and a director determined to not just repeat himself could have lead to a film with this tone. There is a dark spine in this movie, as crooked as it may be.  It's a spine with child murder and perverted sexual politics.  Its comic book origins are firmly in place when the Penguin ascends into a One Percenter Christmas party in a giant Rubber Duckie and when a band of deranged Circus performers attempt to abduct all the first born children of Gotham's elite, but it also contains banter about overpaid security guards and fillings of voids, if ya know what I mean.

Then there is the discussion of women's rights as everyone but Bruce Wayne view women as sexual objects.  Shreck openly debases the obviously intelligent Selina but tells his fellow board members, "she does make a hell of a cup of coffee."  Even as the Penguin's control of Gotham tightens, he can't help but look at his admirers with the lust of a man who has never been touched and practically calls Catwoman a cock tease.  Meanwhile, Catwoman herself is fed up, not just of all the men in her life, but with women who act as damsels in distress.  Its refreshing to see a character confront these concepts so aggressively and unapologetically.  As Batman punches her in the face she cries, "how could you? I'm a woman!" As Batman tries to help her up, apologizing, she kicks the legs out from under him, stating, "as I was saying, I'm a woman and can't be taken for granted."  Hear me roar, indeed.

McDonalds famously cancelled their toy deal with Warner Bros after parents complained about the film's content.  Its a one of a kind film that can have armies of marching penguins that is "too dark" for the kiddies.

After Batman Returns, Warner Bros decided they'd had enough of this director and his quirky visions.  They decided to go considerably brighter and hire Joel Schumacher to direct the next film.  While I enjoy Batman Forever for what it is, we all know what Batman and Robin turned out to be.  After the campy Batman fizzled and died, Nolan stepped in with his considerably more grounded Dark Knight Trilogy.  Even though I despise the last film of the series, I adore the first two. Those films simply do not happen if Batman doesn't crash and burn with Batman and Robin and those films don't happen if Burton doesn't scar children with his perverse super hero film.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, we have to be thankful for Batman Returns, but not just for what it gave us in the future.  I genuinely like it.